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Destination Pluto

NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben

 

In this episode of Our Island Universe, Pluto gets its due.

Learn more about NASA's New Horizons mission to Pluto, arriving in orbit July 14, 2015.

Transcript:

Pluto, the small world discovered in 1930 by American Clyde Tombaugh, is often the source of vigorous debate. Yes, it is a planet! No, it is not! And so it goes… but what we do really know about the 10th most massive object orbiting the Sun? We are about to find out as NASA’s New Horizons flies by the ice world and its several moons this summer!

Pluto has always been a weird object. Soon after its discovery, it was realized that its orbit brought it closer to the Sun than the ice giant Neptune at certain times during its path around the Sun. Moreover, its orbit is tilted in comparison to the paths of the 8 major planets as they travel around the Sun. Pluto also has a moon, Charon, that is half the size of Pluto! So big that some astronomers have even suggested that perhaps its a binary planet! In fact, we now know that Pluto has 5 moons but I’m sure that will change as we get more detailed images from New Horizons as it approaches Pluto.

We now know that the outer fringes of the solar system where Pluto hangs out is littered with dots like Pluto. Eris, an object bigger than Pluto, was only discovered 10 years ago. Since that time we have found other little crumbs: Haumea, Makemake, Sedna to name just a few. These objects make up the Kuiper Belt and are the left over material when the Sun and the major planets formed nearly 5 billion years ago. And that’s what makes studying these worlds so exciting! Learning more about these objects gives us a better picture of how our Solar System looked very early in its formation, how larger planets were made from these ingredients, but it also tells us how this same scenario may be playing out around young stars in our galaxy!